Former Wabash-native Recalls her Career as a Golden Age Animator

 

By Emma Rausch

emma@thepaperofwabash.com

 

WABASH, Ind. – The Honeywell Center’s Clark Gallery will be featuring “The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons” exhibit from Jan. 10 through Feb. 7, and while the artwork seems strictly Hollywood, Wabash has a unique connection to the animations from the Golden Age of American animation, according to Michelle Struble, Honeywell marketing and public relations coordinator.

Wabash native Jean (Vice) Washam worked as an ink and paint artist for Warner Bros. Animation (WBA) during the Chuck Jones era in 1951. From Warner Bros. to Disney to Hanna Barbera, Washam assisted in bringing to life some of the most well-know, classic creations of the 1950s.

“It wasn’t like going to work for most of those places,” Washam told The Paper of Wabash County in a phone interview. “It was so fun, you could hardly wait to get there every day.”

And it all started in Wabash.

 

From Wabash to Warner Bros.

The eldest child of James “Jim” and Lola Vice, Washam loved drawing since she was a child.

“I was drawing as a child and that was the only thing I was really interested in,” she explained. “So it worked out fine. I ended up in the animation business where I got to draw all the time.”

Her sister Joan (Vice) Haag added that their parents possibly had a hand in solidifying Washam’s journey west to Hollywood.

While attending Wabash High School in the mid-1940s, Washam served on the school’s newspaper, The Orange and Black, where she created one of her first comic characters, Joe Boy.

Enthralled with comics, Washam soon became a dedicated fan of Walt Kelly, an American animator and cartoonist best known for the comic strip “Pogo.”

Kelly also became the person who set Washam’s future as an artist in stone.

“Oh I looked up to him as the best cartoonist in the world,” Washam explained. “He had a newspaper strip called ‘Pogo’ and it was very, very popular and very, very good, and there were lots of little paperback books published of them. I had noticed him while I was still in high school in comic books that I would buy.

“First, I noticed the drawings and they weren’t signed. I kept looking and I kept looking and I always bought ones that I could tell that person had drawn it. Finally, he got famous enough that he signed his work.

“So I wrote him a fan letter while I was still in high school,” she continued. “Like the uncle, I told him I was really interested art and I didn’t know whether I was good enough. Should I go art school? Could he give me some advice?”

And he wrote back.

“He said, ‘Well send me some sample of your work and I’ll critique it for you,’” Washam said. “Oh my gosh. So I did and he sent back (a letter) and he said, ‘Yes. I think you should really benefit from art school and I advise you to go.’”

The artwork that she sent was a comic strip of her character, Joe Boy.

“He put a tissue (sketch) paper over that drawing and kind of made it look better,” Washam said, “and (I thought) ‘Oh my God. That’s wonderful I never would have thought to make it look like that.’ This was a high school kid and it was a really crude drawing and when I see those now I think ‘Oh God. I was horrible.’

“But when I came back there (to Wabash) for reunions, they asked me to draw a cover for the little program with Joe Boy on it and by this time it was like 25 years later. I really worked it over and cleaned it up and it ended up really cute.

“And I’m really sorry Mr. Kelly didn’t get to see that,” she chuckled.

In 1946, Washam graduated from WHS determined to get into art school, and was thanks to Wabash community leader Tom Rockwell that it became a reality.

After graduation, Washam worked for Rockwell on the “Meet Mr. Wabash at the Mid-Century” project, a book that highlighted Wabash’s accomplishments over the decades.

“When I was back in Wabash, I was saving up money to come to Los Angeles and I worked for Mr. Rockwell and published that,” Washam said. “I learned a lot from him a lot of how to arrange photographs for magazines and books and I got to draw. I did the cover.

“I enjoyed that. If I hadn’t been fortunate enough to find that, I don’t know what I would have done.”

Within two years time, Washam finally saved enough money to attend the Hollywood Art School in 1948 and graduated in 1950.

Then in 1951, Washam took on her first animation job at Warner Bros.

 

An artist and animator in the Golden Age

Originally, animation wasn’t on Washam’s radar whatsoever, she admitted.

“I thought I was going to be a newspaper cartoonist,” she said. “That was what I really liked to do, but that (my artwork, “Fort Zanzibar”) was not nearly good enough to even get your toe in, but that worked out fine. I got in the animation business and that was really fun too.

“I met a lot of really fun people and met my husband. So, there you go.”

Back in the Golden age of American animation, a cartoon would take close to 400 frames to make a character sit from a standing position, according to Washam.

“The assistant animator would get the key positions, like drawing one and drawing eight, from the animator and then you would clean those drawings up,” Washam said. “They would be in rough form and then fill in the drawings in between.”

At Warner Bros. Washam was a member of the ink and paint department. From Bugs Bunny to Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Washam had a hand in adding color and life into animator Chuck Jones’ creations.

It was also in that studio that she met her future husband, the late Ben Washam, who worked as an animator on the same projects.

“He was an animator of good standing even at that point,” his wife said, later adding, “He really taught me how to in-between, to draw the in-between (animations). So I learned a lot from him.”

However, their time at the studio was cut short when Warner Bros. closed down in 1952, according to Washam.

“It closed down for a while and we all went to other studios, if we could find a job,” she said, “and that’s when I went to Disney for two years.”

In 1953, Washam joined Disney and began working on the 1955 movie, “Lady and the Tramp.”

“They were working on that at the time and I painted lots of cels (celluloids) of ‘Lady and the Tramp,’” she explained. “One interesting thing at Disney is they were shooting live-action, ‘20 Leagues Below the Sea,’ and on our noon breaks we could wander over and watch that. The sets were so neat. That was a lot of fun.”

However, even with the small perk, the Warner Bros. and Disney studios were like night and day, she admitted.

“That wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be, because I didn’t get to draw really,” Washam said, later adding that at Warner Bros. “We were all in the same big, old building and so there was a lot (mingling) at lunch time and at coffee breaks. Everybody seemed to mingle with each other, which it wasn’t (like that at Disney).

“At Disney,” she chuckled, “it was more like being in a nunnery. They didn’t encourage the ladies in the ink and paint (department) to go over or around the animation people. So it was kind of a bore actually as far as fun places.”

Through the transition, the Washams kept dating until the two finally tied the knot in 1954. At the time, she also left Disney and entered commercial studios “where I learned in-betweening and assistant animation,” she explained.

Shortly after, Washam joined Shamus Culhane as an assistant animator.

“My most fun place that I worked was called Shamus Culhane studios and they made title (pages) for movies like ‘Around the World in 80 Days,’” she said. “There was a long opening title that a lot of it was animated, and our studio did that.

“That was the most fun studio I worked in. It wasn’t a large studio, but everybody was so fun and talented and it was like going school everyday. It was really fun. … It was the only place I ever worked where the manager came out and said, ‘You guys! You’ve got to go home. Our insurance doesn’t cover you after 6 o’clock.”

The most fun project she worked on was a series for the Bell Telephone Hour produced and written by Frank Capra between 1952 and 1956.

“It was for educational (purposes) and they showed it in schools especially,” Washam explained. “One was ‘Hemo the Magnificent’ and that was about the heart, blood and circulation. It was all animated. There was one about the weather. There were five of them and they showed them on TV over the years, but they mostly showed in schools.

“Those, you felt like you were doing something important and it was also interesting because we learned a lot of stuff we didn’t know.”

Both of the Washams went on to work with Jay Ward and the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” series. Washam acted as an assistant animator for Hanna Barbera.

“I did a few animation things (as a primary animator) when I worked for Jay Ward, but I was better as an assistant I have to admit,” she said with a laugh.

She later added, “I did a lot of ‘Fractured Fairy Tales,’ and that was a really fun place to work, too. I was doing assistant animation and some limited animations, and we did a lot of commercials that used Bullwinkle and the squirrel. And that was nice because I lived about four blocks from the studio down on Sunset (Boulevard).”

Mr. Washam continued his work with Warner Bros. Animations and is credited to inventing Daffy Duck’s phrase, “Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin.”

“He worked mostly with Chuck Jones on stuff, like the ‘Grinch,’” Washam explained.

He went on to co-direct “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” as well as develop commercials for Cap’n Crunch cereal, which Washam acted as assistant animator on. He is also known for his creation of Bob’s Big Boy for the Big Boy Restaurant chain.

Her husband was also responsible for helping Washam meet her idol, Walt Kelly

“(Kelly) came out here to Hollywood,” Washam said. “He had worked at out here years before I heard of him, years before he became a newspaper cartoonist, and he came out to work with Chuck Jones on a ‘Pogo’ TV show, a special, and Ben knew him and was working with him down there.

“And one day, he brought (Kelly) home for lunch. I didn’t cook, but Ben did, and I was almost paralyzed because this was my idol and he was really neat. I’m sure he enjoyed somebody just going nuts over him.”

He was an animator up until the day he died in 1984. At the time, Washam had retired from the animation business for two years while her husband hosted cost-free, animation education classes in their home’s studio.

“He really wanted people to learn that (art) and as it turned out, that (animation) isn’t even done like that any more,” she explained. “Nobody draws pencil an paper any more.”

However, Washam agreed, there is a love and appreciation for the “old ways” of animation.

 

Looking back on the glory days

While animation has changed over the years, the cartoonists back then are still “the cream of the crop,” according to Washam.

“I was really lucky to get in this business when it was full of really wonderful, talented people,” Washam said. “I couldn’t have had a better life.

“It never seemed like work to me, even though we turned out lots of stuff. It was just so fun to be in that business when I was fortunate enough to come along. I caught it before it ended. The glory days.”

It is uncertain if the Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons exhibit will feature either of the Washams’ works.

The Honeywell Center is located at 275 W. Market St. in Wabash.

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